Birds, flowers of the seasons, and civet cats

Object Details

• Label

  Japanese landscape screens often represent a sequence of four seasons from right to left, beginning with spring and ending with winter. This Japanese convention for representing a temporal sequence of seasons in an apparently unified spatial setting became established in large-format Japanese paintings by the late fifteenth century. While Japanese painters often incorporated birds and flowers-subjects adapted from Chinese art collected in Japan from the thirteenth century onward-into seasonal landscape painting, this pair of screens is somewhat unusual in its inclusion of exotic musk (civet) cats, known in Japanese as jakoneko.

• Provenance

  To 1901

  Kano Oshima, New York to 1901 [1]

  From 1901 to 1919

  Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased from Kano Oshima in 1901 [2]

  From 1920

  Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [3]

  Notes:

  [1] See Original

  Screens Reserved List, R. 4, pg. 1, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.

  [2] See note 1.

  [3] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Birds and Beasts in Japanese Art (January 31 to July 18, 2004)

• Previous custodian or owner

  Kano Oshima (C.L. Freer source)

  Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)

• Origin

  Japan

• Credit Line

  Gift of Charles Lang Freer

• Type

  Painting

• Restrictions and Rights

  CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1590s, 1500s

• Name

  Freer, Charles Lang, Kano, Oshima

• Place

  Japan

• Topic

  Charles Lang Freer collection, Art, Muromachi period (1333 - 1573), Momoyama period (1573 - 1615), Japanese Art, Civet cat, Flowers

• Culture

  Japanese

• Object Type

  Paintings